Tag Archives: Iraq

Reuters – IRBIL: A mass grave containing the remains of at least 16 Yazidis was unearthed in northern Iraq Friday as the atrocities committed by ISIS against the religious minority gradually come to light. The grave in the northwestern district of Zumar is the second to be discovered this week. …

Source: Associated Press – BAGHDAD: “Sleeper cells” made up of former Iraqi police officers and soldiers are tipping off authorities to ISIS positions in the northern city of Mosul, a prominent lawmaker has told the Associated Press. The comments by Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament’s security and defense committee, …

Reuters – The images always share terrifying similarities: hostages kneeling in orange jumpsuits, a black-clad terrorist threatening a beheading. This time, however, the victims are Japanese, and the response of their government and the attitudes of their fellow citizens expose key differences from the standard Western response. Those differences may …

By Rowena Mason – Source: The Guardian – Islamic State (Isis) will not be pushed out of Iraq for another year or two because the country’s armed forces are not ready or equipped to fight back on the ground yet, the foreign secretary has said. In the runup to a …

Reuters – The Yazidi family mourned her death, assuming she had been killed by Islamic State militants or exposure to the blistering summer sun in northwest Iraq, but 15-year-old Suad Shaker Qassem was still alive. Over the weekend, she was released along with around 200 elderly, disabled and infirm Yazidis …

Reuters – A Bosnian court indicted a Muslim priest on Wednesday for recruiting people to fight for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, using a new law aimed at stopping people traveling to fight alongside militants in the Middle East. Husein Bosnic, known as an unofficial leader of …

By ERIC SCHMITT for The New York Times – Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, sought help this summer in solving an urgent problem for the American military: What makes the Islamic State so dangerous? Trying to decipher this complex enemy …

By Catherine Shakdam – The article has first Appeared on Mintpress – ISIS Israel over the past decade, the Middle East — the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the three major monotheistic religions — has become a flashpoint for religious extremism and fascism. The general public has grown …

By Vali R. Nasr, the article has first appeared at The New York Times — The Obama administration’s quest for a grand strategy for the Middle East is in deep trouble, and the failure to reach a nuclear deal with Iran has only made the problem worse. For the first …

By Graham E. Fuller Published first on Graham Fullet’s Blog – ISIS has particularly targeted Shi’a as a key part of their brutal onslaught against any practice of Islam that does not conform to their narrow ahistorical interpretation view of their religion. We hear a lot from western commentators about …

By Martin Chulov for the Guardian – For more than a decade, the Iranian military leader and ideologue has wielded huge influence, thanks to the support of Shia fighters. The rise of Islamic State is his greatest challenge yet. Qassem Suleimani is not used to defeat. So, when the Iraqi …

Reuters – From across Iraq and neighboring states, millions of Shi’ite pilgrims are heading this week to the city of Kerbala for a religious ceremony that authorities say radical Sunni fighters are targeting for attack. Already hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite faithful, many from adjacent Iran, have visited Kerbala for …

BY KEITH JOHNSON for Foreign Policy – Having control of oil helped make the Islamic State the richest terrorist group ever. That’s one reason that U.S. and allied airstrikes have hammered its oil operations since late September. But two weeks later, one big question remains: Is the U.S.-led campaign succeeding …

THE LEVANT – The Islamic State group launched a major attack on the Iraqi city of Ramadi Friday, attempting to seize one of the last urban pockets under government control in troubled Anbar province. Parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital, and all of Fallujah to its east, fell to anti-government forces …

THE LEVANT – Hundreds of Germans have left their home country to fight alongside jihadists in Syria and Iraq, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. “We estimate 550. Just a few days ago we had 450,” the minister told German television channel Phoenix on Friday. “These young people… were radicalised in …

THE LEVANT EXCLUSIVE – By Hussain Choukri – Iraqi forces broke a months-long siege by jihadist fighters of the country’s largest oil refinery Saturday as the top US officer flew in to discuss the expanded war against the Islamic State group. Iraqi forces broke the Islamic State group’s months-long siege …

THE LEVANT – With some 1,500 additional US ground troops heading to Iraq, the first advance team of US forces has gone to the Anbar Province, the restive southwestern province held almost entirely by ISIS. The US team, made up of about 50 troops, is scouting facilities from the 2003-2011 …

THE LEVANT – Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Wednesday sacked 36 army officers in an anti-corruption drive at a time when the military is locked in conflict with Islamic State group jihadists. His office said that Abadi, who also serves as armed forces commander in chief, and has already …

THE LEVANT EXCLUSIVE – By Julia Lugovska – US-led strikes have targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in Iraqi town near the Syrian border late on Friday, 8 November. This meeting possibly included ISIS top commander Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, reported one of the local TV channels on Saturday and …

The Levant Exclusive – By Dr.Amer Al Sabaileh – The launch of the airstrikes against IS marks a turning point and a long road ahead for the region, full of new and complex challenges. The focus of the fight against regional terrorism on IS has increased global coverage highlighting …

THE LEVANT EXCLUSIVE – By Catherine Shakdam – As if Iraq needed to be reminded of the horror which has now hijacked its lands and laid siege to its people, Iraqis have now to bare the threat of IEDs – improvised explosive device – According to a new report published …

THE LEVANT – “Although a lot of wars happened on the Land of Iraq, we did not stop praying in our churches, neither in Mosul nor in surrounding villages,” Mosul Bishop tells the camera before falling into tears. “His Eminence, Mor Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, the Archbishop of Mosul, is weeping while explaining …

THE LEVANT – Islamic State group militants shot and killed 36 Sunni tribesmen, women and children in public Monday, an Iraqi official and a tribal leader said, pushing the total number of members slain by the extremists in recent days to more than 200. Sheik Naim al-Gaoud, a senior figure …

THE LEVANT – Islamic State group extremists lined up and shot dead at least 50 Iraqi men, women and children from the same tribe on Sunday, officials said, in the latest targeting of the group by militants. The killings, all committed in public, raise the death toll suffered by the …

THE LEVANT – The Islamic State jihadist group has in recent days executed more than 200 members of an Iraqi tribe that fought against it, officials and a tribal leader said Sunday. Accounts varied as to the exact period in which the Albu Nimr tribesmen were killed in Iraq’s Anbar …

THE LEVANT – UNESCO chief Irina Bokova on Sunday slammed the “barbaric” destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage, as jihadists from the Islamic State group destroy age-old sites in areas they control. Iraq has “thousands of temples, of buildings, of archaeological sites, of objects, that represent a treasure for (all) humanity,” …

THE LEVANT – Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has called on Baghdad to rush to the aid of the country’s Sunni tribes in their fight against the ISIL Takfiris. In a statement read out by an aide to Ayatollah Sistani in the holy city of Karbala after …

THE LEVANT – Evidence emerges of another massacre by ISIL forces advancing on the Iraqi city of Ramadi A mass grave containing 150 bodies has been discovered in central Iraq, raising fears of a posssible massacre carried out by Isil on their march towards Baghdad. The grave was found on Thursday …

THE LEVANT – By Humeyra Pamuk and Omer Berberoglu – A first group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters entered the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Thursday to help push back Islamic State militants who have defied U.S. air strikes and threatened to massacre its Kurdish defenders. Kobani, on the border with …

THE LEVANT EXCLUSIVE – By Catherine Shakdam – A plague onto the Middle East, a cancer of the mind and an evil which seems to know no bound, ISIS – Islamic State of Syria and Al Sham – the army of the black flags has become synonymous to barbaric violence. …

By SAMIA NAKHOUL, REUTERS Yannis Behrakis/ReutersKurdish refugees stand and walk on a hilltop as thick smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani during heavy fighting between Islamic State and Kurdish Peshmerga forces on Oct. 26, 2014. When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified …

THE LEVANT – US-led warplanes have bombarded the Islamic State group with new air strikes as heavily armed Iraqi Kurdish fighters were on Sunday readying to reinforce the besieged Syrian border town of Kobane. Kurdish forces, backed by US air power, have been holding out for weeks against an IS …

THE LEVANT – After more than two months of air strikes, a US-led coalition has prevented the fall of a northern Syrian town to Islamic State jihadists but is still struggling to halt the group’s advances on other fronts, experts say. Since the air war on the IS militants began …

THE LEVANT EXCLUSIVE – At such a time when ISIS has reportedly gained access to Syrian warplanes, IHS Jane has confirmed that intelligence sources have notified its organization that the “United Kingdom is to deploy an undisclosed number of General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Iraq as …

THE LEVANT – Four former Blackwater security guards were found guilty Wednesday for their roles in a notorious 2007 mass shooting in Baghdad that left at least 14 civilians dead and deepened resentment of America’s involvement in Iraq. The four ex-employees of the US private security firm were convicted on …

THE LEVANT – Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi arrived in Tehran late Monday on his first visit to Iran since taking office after the crisis triggered by the advance of Islamic State militants. Iraqi state television said Abadi, whose country remains beset by IS, arrived shortly before midnight for talks …

THE LEVANT – A suicide bomber detonated explosives Monday outside a Shiite mosque in central Baghdad, killing at least 11 people in the second such attack in the capital in 24 hours, officials said. “It was a suicide attack that targeted people who were just leaving Husseiniyat al-Khayrat” after midday …

THE LEVANT – Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Monday ruled out any foreign ground intervention to assist government forces in retaking territory lost to jihadists and urged Sunnis to give up such hopes. Abadi was speaking in the city of Najaf after a rare meeting with the most revered …

THE LEVANT – US-led aircraft hammered Islamic State jihadists with 21 bombing raids near Kobane on Monday and Tuesday amid signs the strikes had “slowed” the group’s advance on the Syrian border town, the American military said. In one of the heaviest bombardments so far against the Sunni jihadists encircling …

THE LEVANT – The Dutch public prosecutor said on Tuesday that motorbike gang members who have reportedly joined Kurds battling the Islamic State group in Iraq are not necessarily committing any crime. “Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden,” public prosecutor spokesman Wim de …

THE LEVANT – Military commanders from the United States and its allies will hold talks Tuesday on the fight against jihadists in Syria and Iraq, after air strikes failed to stop their advance. Despite daily bombing raids by coalition warplanes, the Islamic State (IS) group has captured nearly half of …

THE LEVANT – Islamic State militants executed an Iraqi news cameraman and 12 other people on Friday in several towns and villages north of Baghdad, officials, relatives and witnesses said. The jihadists shot dead Raad al-Azzawi, a 37-year-old cameraman for local news channel Sama Salaheddin, his brother and two other …